Congratulations to the whole region. It will henceforth be spared Tony’s malevolent presence to which the Middle East owes much of its present ordeal.
Had Mrs Leo Blair suffered a miscarriage 63 years ago, the Middle East might have been spared the Walpurgisnacht of Isis, while Europe wouldn’t be besieged by swarms of refugees risking watery death to flee from Libya.
Israel would also be safer, although, with the ‘Palestinians’ expertly playing on the West’s post-colonial guilt and perverse attraction to Third World diversity, she wouldn’t be completely safe.
But at least the threat of crazed nuclear-armed ayatollahs would be counterbalanced by Saddam’s Iraq and Gaddafi’s Libya, with Assad’s Syria sitting on the fence. Now, with those major players off the field, Iran is emerging as the region’s strongman.
America has withdrawn from the mess, having first started it under Dubya in collusion with our miscarriage manqué. Once bitten by the fiasco of the ill-conceived and illegal invasion, she is now twice shy to do something about Iran’s nuclear threat – other than tacitly encouraging it.
We’ll have to suffer Obama’s sanctimonious waffles for another couple of years, but at least we stand a good chance of not being exposed to the smug noises produced by arguably the most hideous character ever to occupy 10 Downing Street.
Tony had a good thing going while it lasted. First he went along with Dubya on his criminal aggression against Iraq. Then, when that went sour, he asked his American accomplice to put in a good word for him with the self-appointed Quartet of the UN, EU, US and Russia (!), which was looking for a front man.
“Yo, Blair,” said Dubya. “You scratched my back, I’ll scratch yours. Count on me, boy. And get me a refill, will ya?”
Bush was as good as his word. Tony ‘Yo’ Blair got the job of peace envoy and made it a resounding success. For himself, that is.
He could now go through the motions of global politics, while focusing his undivided attention on building his business empire, much of it made possible by his contacts with Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and other Emirates, not to mention the Palestinian mobile phone company he got together with another one of his clients, JP Morgan.
As to his supposed day job, he brought to it the defunct notions he shared with the US neoconservatives. According to Tony, all problems in the Middle East spring from the conflict between Israel and the ‘Palestinians’.
As Tony’s sponsor Dubya said, Islam is a religion of peace (Tony’s successor Dave saw fit to repeat this idiocy, but then he’s the self-described ‘heir to Blair’). Let those poor Palestinians, happily displaced for three generations, have their state, and Islam will return to its normal peaceful self.
A worthy goal towards which to strive, or rather it would be if it were true. In fact, the briefest of looks at some of the world’s flashpoints over the last 20 years will show that most of them involved Muslims – and had nothing to do with Israel.
Specifically one could mention the conflicts between Bosnian Muslims and Christians, Côte d’Ivoire Muslims and Christians, Cyprus Muslims and Christians, East Timor Muslims and Christians, Indonesian Muslims and Christians in Ambon island, Kashmir Muslims and Hindus, Kosovo Muslims and Christians, Macedonian Muslims and Christians, Nigeria Muslims and both Christians and Animists, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims throughout the Islamic world, Muslims and Christians in the Philippines, Chechen Muslims and Russians, Azeri Muslims and Armenian Christians, Sri Lanka Tamils and Buddhists, Thailand’s Muslims and Buddhists in the Pattani province, Muslim Bengalis and Buddhists in Bangladesh, Muslims and Protestant, Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox Christians in Kurdistan.
But moral and intellectual integrity mean nothing to our Tony. What matters is maintaining his image of the global dove of peace, while feathering his nest to the tune of hundreds of millions.
I don’t know the Hebrew, Arabic or Farsi for good riddance to bad rubbish. But whatever it is, the Middle Easterners should be saying it. There’s hope for them yet.